Close-Up by Diane Elayne Dees (BUGS & INSECTS Series)

January 19, 2026 //
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Close-Up
by Diane Elayne Dees

When I get near enough,
I can see that each
of the dragonfly’s eyes
is like a polished turquoise
stone—an oversized gem
on a flamboyant bolo.
Below, spikes like fine brushes
oppose each other above a thorax
that fades from cloudy white
to the blue of a clear sky,
where lustrous shells are flanked
by armor plates of solid gold.
Its transparent wings, etched
carefully by a cosmic laser,
spread before me. I get close
enough to see the fine threads
on its claw-like legs;
it does not move.
Instead, it stares at me
with thirty thousand lenses,
and I feel seen in a way
I do not fully understand,
but which makes the universe
expand just enough for me
to remain perfectly still,
in a transcendent place of knowing.

Originally published in Sparks of Calliope.

PHOTO: Dragonfly by LiCheng Shih.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: During the spring and summer, I spend a lot of time observing, photographing, and petting dragonflies. Some like to perch on my hand, and this year, one was even into taking selfies. They are the most fascinating creatures I have ever encountered.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbooks Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books), The Last Time I Saw You (Finishing Line Press), The Wild Parrots of Marigny (Querencia Press), and I Can’t Recall Exactly When I Died (Kelsay Books). She is also the author of four Origami Poems Project microchaps, and her poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction have been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world. Her author blog is Diane Elayne Dees: Poet and Writer-at-Large.

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Humming: Bee Concerto by Julia A. Dickson (BUGS & INSECTS Series)

January 18, 2026 //
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Humming: Bee Concerto
by Julia A. Dickson

Low-pitched drone reverberates
hollow tree like a bass symphony
wing-ed conductors move about in the air
tree bark alive and crawling with life
the swarm mimics a thick blanket

Humming in a unison concerto
laboriously in their shared task,
scouts fly reconnaissance, return
heavy with nectar, join with the masses.

They seem to signal others to depart
queen surveys her realm from
protected inner sanctum—all work
performed skillfully, without complaint

IMAGE: Musical Bees, found at Interval.hk, which lists bee-inspired classical music.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Bees are an integral part of nature and seem to be at risk from humans, as are many species in the animal and insect worlds. I envisioned the humming as a busy harmony, like a symphony.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Julie A. Dickson has been writing poetry and YA fiction for over 50 years, with full-length works available on Amazon, and poetry appearing in numerous journals, including Ekphrastic Review, Lothlorien, Blue Heron Review, and Silver Birch Press. Dickson writes from art prompts, nature, and memories. She shares her home with two rescued feral cats, Cam and Jojo.

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Racing Roaches by Lynn Norton (BUGS & INSECTS Series)

January 17, 2026 //
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Racing Roaches
by Lynn Norton

Open warehouse doors invite unwanted
guests. American cockroaches, enormous
cousins of common kitchen vermin, make
themselves at home in the lunchroom.

Evasive, acrobatic, fast as bullets, invaders
avoid easy capture. Traps, disguised as food
containers, tempt with delectable leftovers.
“Got them all,” boasts a coworker, “Now what?”

“Let’s race them,” quips another. Traps become
training camps, lined with double-sticky tape
to exercise Arthropoda athletes, numbers
painted on wings like competing airplanes.

After hours, popping beer tabs percuss the air
like tap dancers. Hastily arranged planks, roofed
with clear plastic, form lanes on a ping-pong table.
Excited trainers move contestants into position.

Squawk of a bicycle horn signals trap doors to open.
Roaches bound down tracks toward favorite treats.
Spectators shout encouragement, squeal with delight
like toddlers getting first tastes of chocolate ice cream.

“Head to head, they’re coming down the stretch,” shrieks
the announcer, “It’s—it’s too close to call. Everyone
is a winner!” Trophies adorn lockers. Roaches return
to homes of rotting leaves. Lunchroom gets a screen door.

PHOTO: Electric Cockroach Roach Animal Racing Toy, available at Amazon.  (NOTE: Editor did not want to show a real cockroach.)

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My poem is a (mostly) truthful tale about a mischievous prank. No insects were harmed or killed. The photograph is of a plastic replica honoring American cockroach #3 that I entered into the race. All captives were ultimately released, so neighbors may have encountered huge roaches with numbers painted on them. Mystery solved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lynn Norton is a commercial sculptor of original patterns for ornaments, toys, and collectibles. Since 2020, he’s often been inspired to shape appealing images with words and phrases when three-dimensions aren’t enough. His poems have been published in Silver Birch Press and numerous other journals.

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Sphinx Moths by Shelly Norris (BUGS & INSECTS Series)

January 16, 2026 //
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Sphinx Moths
by Shelly Norris

This year’s Sphinx Moths flit about
pollinating the Mimosa
trading turns at the feeder so that sometimes
in a fleeting pass
I cannot tell one from a Hummingbird
as all day yesterday I could not distinguish
the thoughts darting between blinks
as memory or dream.
And though the tomato
vines out back straggle dry and withered
as a Dakota pioneer mother who birthed
fourteen babies in thirteen years, I feel
some modest guilt for plucking at the giant
hornworms like fat lint, squeamishly peeling
those enormous prickly green muscles
munching limbs and suckling

at the unripe cherry orbs—
squealing as I fling them far out
into the grass to disappear into the roots
with the tiny frogs and mink-coated carcasses
of the cats’ kills, wondering if they would
inch their way back to the ciliated stalks
and climb aboard to conceal themselves
for the last hours before burrowing into the soil
to crust over and sleep, or if they will
just go gentle.

PHOTO: Sphinx Moth by cecile mousist on Unsplash.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I’ve never been squeamish about insects or arachnids. As a child, I was fascinated by orb-weavers or cat-faced spiders. I studied them as they clung to lilac branches and as they cast webs on corn stalks in my grandmother’s garden. As an adult, I remove insects from the house and place them outside. To the contrary, however, I am terrified of snakes, and by shape association worms and larvae and sticks lying about that might appear serpentine. Gardening in Missouri, I encountered tomato hornworms. Having grown up in a farm community where fields and gardens were and still are poisoned in preference to crop yield over environment, I try to practice responsible environmentally sound yard and garden management. To support the future sphinx moth population, which I enjoy watching tend to their pollinating work, I learned that peeling the muscular larvae from my plants and tossing them far out into the grass should prevent them from finding their way back. I think it worked . . .

PHOTO: Tomato hornworm, the larval stage of the sphinx moth, by Margaret Martin.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Shelly Norris resides on the Western Montana Hi-Line, where she instructs Liberal Arts and Communications at Aaniiih Nakoda College. Her first collection of poetry, Hyperbola, debuted in February 2024. Her second collection, Dry Lake,  was released by Powder River Publishing in late 2025. She is currently organizing a third collection, tentatively titled On My Hands and Knees.

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Categories BUGS & INSECTS

Everything by Ellen Rowland (BUGS & INSECTS Series)

January 15, 2026 //
2


Everything
by Ellen Rowland

I don’t buy into the idea that life is short.
Just look how the barn swallow takes her time
in the back-and-forth building of her nest,
how she digests dung beetle and damselfly
before offering them to her hungry young.
Snail is anything but curt on her long path
through jungled grass. And here,
the hairy caterpillar legging its way
along the highway of a sunflower stem, no care
for the stream of speeding ants and aphids
that pass him by. What is time to the spider
knitting her intricate angles and outlines
against the trusting morning sun?
Any day is made up of what’s spent—
the brief surge and wane of curiosity,
the stretch to accept the temporary.
To kneel and look closely at everything
is everything.

PHOTO: Caterpillar and Sunflower by Anshad S.


NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: When I’m feeling stuck in my writing, I like to challenge myself by taking a screenshot of the New York Times Connections game for that day and write a poem incorporating as many words as I can. It’s a way to enter a poem and be guided by language I may otherwise not have chosen. Nature has always been a great inspiration for my poetry. Insects and birds have valuable lessons to teach us, and I love the way these words came together to express that simple wonder. (Words used: buy/short/digests/ hairy/ outlines/brief /surge/ wane/ accept/ kneel)

PHOTO: Connections, New York Times (April 27, 2024).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ellen Rowland is a writer and editor who leads small, generative poetry workshops on craft and form. She is the author of two collections of haiku, Light, Come Gather Me and Blue Seasons, and the recently released Echo of Silence/L’écho du Silence, a bilingual book of haiku and tanka. Her full-length poetry collection, No Small Thing, was published by Fernwood Press in 2023. You can find her writing in One Art Poetry, Sheila-Na-Gig, Braided Way, Silver Birch Press, Rock.Paper.Poem, and several anthologies, including The Path to Kindness and The Wonder of Small Things edited by James Crews. Her chapbook, In Search of Lost Birds, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. She lives off the grid with her family on a small farm in Greece. Connect with her on Instagram and Facebook.

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Moves Like Mantis by Jennifer Hernandez (BUGS & INSECTS Series)

January 14, 2026 //
1


Moves Like Mantis
by Jennifer Hernandez

Oh, to have the poise
of that praying mantis pair!

Those camouflaged partners
who prance on plants

with musical reflexes
too quick for naked eyes

like Zeybek dancers
on Anatolian plains.

Heroes noble & brave
with spikes for snaring,

posture open,
wings a symbol.

Never to be pinned
into place.

PHOTO:  Danlock by Hasan Bağlar is a macro photograph featuring two praying mantises in a synchronized, dancing pose. The photograph was grand prize winner of the 2025 CEWE Photo Award (the world’s largest photo competition)— out of 656,738 photographs from 153 countries— and also gained recognition from National Geographic. The image, taken in Cyprus, captures the mantises’ defensive behavior when threatened, appearing like a coordinated dance and highlighting nature’s intimate beauty. 

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Once upon a time, I dreamed of a career in musical theater. In the end, I decided that I probably didn’t need quite that much rejection in my life—so I became a poet instead. (The irony doesn’t escape me.) This poem was born as an ekphrastic work in response to this beautiful photograph by Hasan Bağlar of two praying mantises posed as dancers more elegant than I could ever dream of becoming. Nature is an amazing teacher and often beckons us to look closer and to ask more questions, much in the same way that poetry does.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jennifer Hernandez teaches immigrant youth and writes poetry, flash, and creative nonfiction. She’s the vice-president of the League of Minnesota Poets and loves the energy of sharing poetry live. Recent publications and prizes include The Rise Up Review, Talking Stick, Lake Country Journal, and New Verse News. She is Pushcart-nominated, and her poems have also been featured at public installations, such as the Tucson Haiku Hike, the Mankato Poetry Walk & Ride, Poetry in the Park in the Dark with Saint Paul Almanac, and The Flowerpot Poetry Walk in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota.

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Butterflies and Bridges by G. Murray Thomas (BUGS & INSECTS Series)

January 13, 2026 //
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Butterflies and Bridges
by G. Murray Thomas

I sit on a railroad bridge
watching the flowers on the riverbank
turn into butterflies.
They flutter in and out of existence
like elementary particles
described in books
of cosmic physics.
The background—
a field of energy, a field of flowers—
briefly coalesces
into a muon, a pion, a butterfly
and then dissolves back into
if original field.

I sit on a bridge
which crosses from reality
to a place where
butterflies become flowers
and back again,
and it looks no different
from where I am.

The rails beneath me
are real.
But beneath them?
How real are those
pions and muons and protons
which become matter,
metal,
rails?

The rails meet
at the point of infinity
and it is just down the tracks
on the other side of the bridge.
I can see it!
I could walk there,
except I’m too busy watching butterflies.
I want to watch them forever.
I want to catch one.
Not to own it,
but only so I can say
“This butterfly
right here
right now
is real.”

First Published in Unicorns in the Garden (Conservatory of American Letters Anthology, 1991). Also published in Cows on the Freeway (iUniverse, 1999).

PAINTING: Evocation of Butterflies by Odilon Redon (1910-1912).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem was inspired by reading Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
For 30 years, G. Murray Thomas was an active participant in the Southern California poetry scene, as a writer, performer, reading host, promoter, editor, and publisher. He has published four books, Cows on the Freeway (iUniverse) and My Kidney Just Arrived (Tebot Bach)—both full-length poetry collections—and Paper Shredders (iUniverse) and News Clips and Ego Trips (Write Bloody), anthologies of others’ writings. In 2018, he moved back to upstate New York to care for his aging parents. His latest book, Living the Sundown (Moon Tide Press), covers that experience. Find more at gmurraythomas.com.

Author photo by Aaron Winters

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My Takeaway from a Hornet by Elaine Sorrentino (BUGS & INSECTS Series)

January 12, 2026 //
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My Takeaway from a Hornet
by Elaine Sorrentino

One, maybe two extra minutes
to tuck in a cool sheet, light blanket
before scooping lunch money

off the kitchen counter
and skipping off to school
might have circumvented the sting.

Looking back, I wonder─
while I was munching my lunch,
hurrying through history, running

at recess, was my ferocious friend
plotting his undercover ambush,
anticipating the moment

he’d invade my fleshy thigh
with his painful histamine?
Did I breach his new hiding place,

surprise him into instinctive maneuvers?
That swollen, throbbing leg cemented
a change to my ten-year-old morning ritual;

aware of the consequences, I never take
for granted the gift of a well-made bed.
I should send that hornet a thank you note.

PHOTO: Asian giant hornet by DerWeg.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This is a poem about not making my bed in the morning and paying for it that night. I certainly learned my lesson.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Elaine Sorrentino, author of Belly Dancing in a Brown Sweatsuit (Kelsay Books, 2025) has been published in journals such as Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Gyroscope Review, Ekphrastic Review, Quartet Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Cool Beans Lit, and Haikuniverse. A lover of ekphrastic poetry, she is facilitator of the Duxbury Poetry Circle.

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Phototaxis by Sheila Wellehan (BUGS & INSECTS Series)

January 11, 2026 //
2


Phototaxis
by Sheila Wellehan

A white moth whooshed into the garage,
attracted to the lone light bulb.
He quickly decided

my home was his nirvana.
I pinched his wings gently
and placed him in the backyard,

but he was determined to live inside.
I swatted at him,
mistaking him for a mosquito,

when he landed softly on my back,
then nearly mangled him with my hairbrush
as he tried to rest on my head—

I’ll never forgive myself
for almost crushing him
as I rolled on top of him in bed.

He grew bolder,
put himself in real danger.
I feared he was a light addict.

I’m amazed he didn’t drown in the shower.
He dashed into my clothes dryer
the second I opened the door.

I haven’t seen him in weeks now,
since the morning he flew out of
my refrigerator.

The back door screen is torn in three places.
With any luck,
he found his way out.

Legions of luminous moths flutter
against my kitchen window
when I flip on the light each night—

frenzied believers
trying to touch their god thing.
I search their faces

and wonder if he’s here.

First published in Peacock Journal.

PHOTO: White satin moth (Leucoma salicis) by Vincent Malloy.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: During the warm months, the line between indoors and outdoors blurs as doors open wide and often, and wild creatures find their way inside my home. I escort some of these visitors back outside as quickly as possible. My cats hunt others. But some creatures, like the moth in this poem, co-exist with my household for a while. Phototaxis is the movement of a living thing in response to light.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sheila Wellehan’s poetry is featured in On the Seawall, Maine Public Radio’s Poems From Here, Psaltery & Lyre, Rust & Moth, Whale Road Review, and many other publications. She served as an assistant poetry editor for The Night Heron Barks and an associate editor for Ran Off With the Star Bassoon. Sheila lives in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. You can read her work at sheilawellehan.com.

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mantis by Jennifer Pratt-Walter (BUGS & INSECTS Series)

January 10, 2026 //
1


mantis
by Jennifer Pratt-Walter

taut mechanical
precision, green bolts and bearings
connecting your clockwork parts
to the world you stalk

eye-swivel, hand-wring
abdomen intense with eggs
the sibilance of your flight
spills your secrets

a thousand images your eyes
kaleidoscope all at once

you a voracious machine
made to eat, to mate
to eat your mate

friend,
i may have been better off
doing the same

PHOTO: Praying mantis by Gerhard K. Heilig.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Every late summer, I’m always thrilled when I find a Mantis. Some are green and some more tan. The abdomen on a female gets very swollen with eggs, making them too heavy to fly and quite vulnerable. It’s an insect that purposely looks you in the eyes, tilting its head around with purpose to figure you out. They look like a machine from the Mechanical age. I shot this photo of a grown female that liked my roses. I hear after the mating, the girls eat their bridegrooms!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jennifer Pratt-Walter (she/her) is a Crone who finds awe in the simple daily miracles of life. She is a professional harpist, poet, and hobbyist photographer. She has had poetry and photography published in a number of print and on-line journals, including VoiceCatcher, Calyx, and Palette. Jennifer has three grown children and a husband and lives on a small farm in Vancouver. No AI is used in her work.

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